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The chapter examines the common pressures on employment and the welfare state that originated from changes in the international economic environment after the early 1970s, and it relates these to national economic conditions and policy legacies in order to identify differences of vulnerability and varying demands on the institutional capacity for policy adjustment. In the earlier period until the mid‐1980s, these challenges were of a macro‐economic nature, and the effectiveness of national policy responses depended primarily on institutional capabilities for effective coordination between wage policy and monetary policy. After the mid‐1980s, the dominant challenges arose from the global integration of capital markets and the increasing intensity of international competition in product markets. Now the greater or lesser vulnerability of countries was primarily determined by the structure of their welfare states – in particular by the dependence on particular sources of finance and by their effects on service employment in the sheltered sectors. What mattered was the institutional and political capacity to adopt and implement unpopular changes in the policy legacies of the welfare state.

The chapter examines the dynamics of policy responses and their ultimate effectiveness. It identifies typical sequences of policy failures, caused by the misfit between new problems and existing policy legacies, which may generate processes of policy learning that ultimately produce effective solutions; but it also points to instances in which policy learning is blocked by conflicts of interest or by divergent cognitive orientations in multi‐actor institutional settings. Of equal importance are sequences of lateral spillovers, where the solutions to problems in one policy area generate new problems that subsequently must be dealt with in adjacent policy areas. In the 1970s and 1980s, these spillovers were most important in countries where the rise of open unemployment was mitigated by resort to early retirement and disability pensions. In analysing these sequences of policy failure, learning, and problem displacement, the chapter also compares and assesses the greater or lesser effectiveness of the policy responses actually adopted and identifies successful countries that were able to adjust to the challenges of the open economy without abandoning their welfare‐state goals.

Utilizing a framework based on three gender policy regimes, this chapter analyses the inscription of gender relations in the social provision of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. In contrast to the mainstream literature that emphasizes the similarities between Swedish and Norwegian social policies and that the two countries are the closest approximation of the social democratic welfare regime, policy differences stand out when gender is considered. The next part of the analysis seeks to explain the differences in terms of variations in women's movement strategies, party constellations, and policy legacies. The concluding sections discuss the features of the social democratic welfare regime that undercut gender inequalities and the emergence of a common gender policy regime.

The conclusion emphasizes more general patterns that were identified in the comparative analyses. If due account is taken of the specifics of economic changes and national policy legacies, the variation among the responses of individual countries is far from random. In each of the periods covered by the study, there were distinct groups of countries facing similar policy challenges that would have called for similar responses. And even though the increasing internationalization of the economic environment has narrowed the range of economically viable national policy choices, we are able to show that in each of these groups, one or more countries did in fact have the institutional capabilities and the policy discourses that allowed them to move “from vulnerability to competitiveness” without abandoning their normative aspirations or jeopardizing the democratic legitimacy of their governments.

Here, the focus will turn to Obama’s international legacy, and his administration’s acceptance of a more limited US world role. The pivot to China, resetting relations with Russia, among other examples, will be considered in terms of their success or lack thereof, and the extent and manner in which Trump moved to undo the paths of his predecessor. In addition, there were some specific actions by the Obama administration that did change US policy and which can legitimately be described as aspects of his legacy such as the Iran deal and renewal of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Both of these came under fire by conservative critics.

This chapter tries to develop some arguments in the literature regarding the relative exclusion of migrants and the structural impact of welfare states on their social-inclusion patterns. It begins by explaining the system-specific modes of inclusion and their differential impact on migrants, while using a policy-legacy perspective. The chapter then contextualises the position of the migrants in Germany today within a framework of historical policy legacies. The dominant domains of migrant inclusion and the sources of intergenerational pathways of inclusion are also viewed in this context. The chapter ends with a tribute to political participation as a cross-cutting rights regime.

This chapter discusses the challenges faced by policymakers at the start of the 21st century. These challenges have arisen from the economic, demographic, and policy legacy of the previous century. The discussion provides a number of criteria that are believed to be necessary for a sustainable and effective pension system. Using these criteria, it evaluates New Labour's pension settlement for 1998. Finally, it considers an alternative option for pension provision.

Recent research on the development of social investment has demonstrated reform progress not only in different regions of Europe, but also in Latin America and South-East Asia. However, the specific substance of the social investment agendas varies strongly between these regions. Why have social investment ideas and policies been more developed in some regions and countries than in others? Building on the theoretical framework of this volume, our chapter suggests that the content of regional social investment agendas depends on policy legacies in terms of investment vs consumption-oriented policies and their interaction with structural pressures. In a second step, we argue that the chances of social investment agendas to be implemented depend on the availability of political support coalitions between organizational representatives of the educated middle classes and either business or working-class actors. We illustrate our claims with reference to family policy developments in France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Chapter 1 challenges the conventional wisdom on American exceptionalism in regard to tax and social policy. After setting up the puzzle and outlining why previous theories cannot explain them, it lays out the book’s main arguments in detail. First, it outlines the book’s theory of fiscalization as an obfuscation strategy. Second, it outlines a new theory of the cultural legacies of public policies. It is not, as most scholars argue, the legacy of the Poor Law that explains America’s exceptional tax credits but rather the absence of a legacy of family allowances. It argues that “logics of appropriateness,” institutionalized in policy legacies, can limit the ability of future policymakers to extend benefits to seemingly deserving target populations. The legitimacy of a policy depends not only on who is receiving it and whether it is effective but also on how they are receiving it.

This chapter explores the robustness of the Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment (SERF) Index to assumptions and choices made in its construction. More particularly, it addresses the following five questions: Does the observed best practice with regard to a given substantive social and economic right reflect prioritizing that right over the other rights? Are the estimated Achievement Possibilities Frontiers robust to alternative estimation techniques? How do a country’s structural characteristics and historical policy legacy affect its ability to fulfill social and economic rights? How robust is the SERF Index to alternative indicators of resource availability? Finally, how can the SERF Index be modified to take into account the principle of nondiscrimination?

This chapter provides a review of relevant literature on parenting and disability, which looks at parenting support and the barriers that certain parents encounter when bringing up their children. It argues that disabled parents have been mainly invisible in that particular tradition of social-policy research. The chapter studies policy context, particularly of the 1989 Children Act and the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. It aims to determine the role these Acts play in structuring the response of formal services to disabled parents. The chapter also tries to show how their practice and policy legacies influence the way parents are supported.